By Baylee Sweitzer for Kent State News Lab.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

Jeff Duling's 1,400-acre farm sits at the end of a long and dusty gravel driveway in Northwest Ohio's Putnam County, about halfway between Lima and Defiance. An aluminum-sided grain elevator towers over his fields, where he grows corn, wheat and soybeans.

Duling recently entered the estimated $84 billion carbon market after he purchased 134 new acres of farmland and enrolled them in a program called RegenConnect, which incentivizes farmers to use regenerative agriculture practices that help capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and move it via plants into the soil.

Those 134 acres represent a new revenue stream for Duling: RegenConnect pays him for each acre that helps sequester carbon, using funds from companies seeking to offset their greenhouse gas emissions or declare themselves "net zero."

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide to help reduce the amount of it in the atmosphere, with the larger goal of reducing global climate change, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

There are two types: geologic, which is where the carbon is stored in underground geologic formations, and biologic, which refers to the storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide in vegetation, soils, woody products, and aquatic environments.

Until he bought the new land, Duling was skeptical about carbon sequestration as a way to make extra money on his farm. "I think the carbon market is so immature, it's like the Wild West," Duling said.

But he already sells a lot of his grain to Cargill, the company that runs RegenConnect, and has a good relationship with his buyer. So when the company created the sequestration program, it asked him to enroll some of his acres.

Regenerative agriculture practices include cover crops, which cover the soil and help reduce erosion, improve fertility and soil quality, among other effects; no-till, which helps decrease erosion because the soil is undisturbed through tillage; or reduced-till, which means the tillage may be less intense, shallower or cover a smaller area in the field or across the farm.

John Davis is a Delaware County farmer who enrolled more than 100 acres in Nutrien's carbon program last year through the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund. Davis is a fourth-generation farmer and has farmed for 35 of his 54 years. He grows corn, soybeans and wheat.

Davis, like Duling, thinks the carbon market is still young. "I don't have any issue with the thought process or the idea behind it. I think there's a lot of unknowns for the producer, for the grower," he said.

The fledgling carbon market

Programs like Cargill's and Nutrien's are part of the carbon market, a trading system where carbon credits are bought and sold with the intent of reducing pollution overall, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

Agricultural practices can help capture and/or keep carbon dioxide and other pollutants out of the atmosphere. By using certain management practices, farmers can earn money in the carbon market by selling carbon credits to companies looking to offset their own greenhouse gas emissions.

A carbon credit, also called a carbon offset, is a permit that represents the reduction, sequestration or avoidance of one metric ton, or 1,000 kilograms, of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. If a company emits two metric tons of carbon dioxide and purchases one carbon credit, the company overall produces one ton of carbon dioxide for the purposes of a carbon market.

Most of the carbon market worldwide is a mandatory one, where governments require companies to offset their emissions. In the United States, except for California, the carbon market is voluntary-that means companies are not required to participate. In Ohio, the buying and selling of carbon credits are also unregulated.

Many companies in the United States are looking to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, said Brent Sohngen, a professor of environmental and resource economics at The Ohio State University. But to become net zero, they have to buy carbon credits.

"These large companies are looking at their carbon emissions and finding there is no way to avoid carbon emissions from using greenhouse gas-polluting fuels, so they are shifting gears," he said. "They are looking to reduce emissions through the agricultural and forestry sectors and take those emissions and use them towards their net-zero goals."

Since most of the carbon market in the United States is unregulated, companies were created to develop a methodology to make and sell carbon credits. Measuring, reporting and verifying carbon offsets are key to obtaining a carbon credit.

The process of entering into a carbon farming practice plan

Once a farmer enrolls in a carbon program, a carbon farming practice plan is designed based on an initial assessment of the farm.

Farmers implement changes on their farms, such as not tilling their soil and planting cover crops like alfalfa or clover. Then they measure and record data, which is checked and verified by an independent verification body such as Verra or the Gold Standard.

After the farm's carbon offsets are verified, a carbon credit is issued. The project developer or a broker connects the carbon credit with the end buyer, usually a company that purchases the credit to offset carbon dioxide emissions.

When Duling enrolled his acres, it was an easy process. "The guy that signed me up for the carbon came with his laptop," he said. "He just brought my farms up into aerial view, we picked the fields out with satellite imagery. The total time I was with him was 15 minutes."

Carbon programs must look at the history of the acres to determine how to create high-quality carbon credits. Gathering the history of whether or not the fields were tilled or cover-cropped would have been a tedious process for Duling.

"That's why I lost interest with these other companies. I only got 15 minutes invested," with Cargill, he said. "I made $740 in 15 minutes. That made a lot more sense to me."

Duling signed a one-year contract and will be paid $370 in the fall and $370 in the spring to earn about $5.52 per acre.

Carbon credits are issued based on new practices that are implemented on a farm. "To produce a premium, high-quality carbon credit, it would have to come from an additionality, meaning a new practice," said Clay Edwards, the program lead for Cargill's RegenConnect.

Carbon credits encourage change - but don't reward existing sustainable practices

If farmers are already using practices that capture or avoid carbon emissions, then there is not a measurable carbon dioxide savings to count toward a carbon credit.

"We want farmers that have been doing those practices, like no tillage, to continue doing those practices. The carbon market isn't paying farmers enough to stop doing something that is working for them. It just hasn't evolved that way," Edwards said.

Duling is frustrated he can't benefit from his already carbon-friendly acres.

"The problem with carbon-credit programs is that they want us to be doing things like not tilling and planting cover crops. I am already doing all that, but they will not let me in," Duling said.

By tilling his new acreage, the carbon naturally stored in the soil will be released into the atmosphere-avoiding further tillage and planting cover crops will recapture that released carbon, allowing him to earn carbon credits.

"It wasn't ground that I had in my operation for five, 10, 20 years. The acres that's been in my operation, I am not going to till," Duling said.

Prices for a carbon credit vary, but generally, a farmer could earn from $1 to $5 extra per acre on top of what they make for their crop. For example, according to the Farm Office of the Ohio State University Extension Office, Ohio corn should yield a range of return from $260 to $619 per acre in 2022, depending on land production capabilities.

"A lot of programs are asking farmers to do a lot of practices for very little money. When it came down to it, I figured out I had the carbon they wanted, but I was getting the least amount of money," Duling said.

Carbon programs will eventually have to change, he said, because "they're going to run out of farmers."

Duling and Davis think the money from carbon programs helps offset the extra work they have to put into their fields, but ultimately they will not be "a huge money maker" for farms. Instead, they think the companies selling the credits, like Cargill, will benefit most.

Most farmers are eligible for a carbon credit program, Edwards said. The only way a farmer would not be able to participate is if they used best-management practices on all of their acres.

"That's probably less than 1% of the acres in the U.S. Every farmer's field is different; it has its own unique characteristics. It's really got to be a customized approach," he said.

Companies trying to achieve their net-zero emissions goals in the United States are driving the voluntary carbon market, Sohngen said. "If companies continue to get serious about their net-zero goals, and the price of carbon starts to edge up, then we'll see more people jump into it."



Baylee Sweitzer wrote this article for Kent State News Lab. This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


get more stories like this via email

Utah's leaders are taking steps to protect the state's shrinking agricultural land by issuing conservation easements. The move will limit non-agricultural uses on protected lands and ensure they remain dedicated to farming and ranching.

Jeremy Christensen, land conservation program manager for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, said the easements are necessary so that Utahns in the future can consume locally grown food. Because of the expected population growth in the Beehive State, farm land is being targeted by developers for housing and industrial projects.

Since the 1960s, Christensen said, the state has already lost a quarter of its farm land. He said that figure could likely rise if more isn't done.

"We are really struggling to produce enough food to feed the number of people that are coming into and are growing in our state," he said, "so a lot of the food that we eat comes from elsewhere."

Christensen said he is confident the answer may lie within conservation easements. The latest round of awards from the LeRay McAllister Working Farm and Ranch Fund is set to protect more than 5,500 acres throughout the state and award six privately-owned farms and ranches a total of about $1.7 million.

Christensen said landowners will receive funds for the developmental rights they're willing to giving up.

Christensen said farmers have welcomed the conservation easements, and added that there is a "huge demand," especially among multi-generational farming operations that are concerned with their longevity and vitality. But Christensen added that they're aiming to dispel misconceptions, "whether or not the land owner remains the owner of the property at the end of the day, which they do, or whether there is some mechanism by which they could lose control of the property through doing this easement, which they really can't."

Christensen contended the benefits of protecting these private properties extend "far beyond the boundaries of the properties themselves." He added that it is a benefit to not only landowners, but for all in the state who'll be able to consume local food and learn to value open lands.


get more stories like this via email

By Nina Elkadi for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

When Nancy Utesch first moved to Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, a family in her community was poisoned after drinking water contaminated with E. coli, which has been tied to manure spread on nearby farms. The entire family went to the hospital, Utesch tells Sentient, and the eight-month old daughter spent time in intensive care.

"We were really stunned by the outpouring of support for the farmer and not the family," she says. "Upon arriving here, we began to learn the inner workings of this very dysfunctional dynamic that [concentrated animal feeding operations] bring to a community, which really pits neighbors against neighbors."

It was quite the first impression of her county, where she and her husband Lynn have now lived for the last 20 years. Utesch's advocacy group, Kewaunee CARES, is one of 13 groups who sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over their lack of enforcement of CAFOs under the Clean Water Act. On Oct. 2 the court denied the petition in full.

Fewer Than 30 Percent of CAFOs Have Clean Water Act Permits

Utesch estimates that there were approximately two concentrated feeding operations, or CAFOs, in Kewaunee County when she moved there. Now, according to new data compiled by Food & Water Watch, Kewaunee County has 36 factory farms which produced over 2 billion pounds of waste in 2022. The manure from CAFOs is often kept in open-air lagoons, where it is stored until it is sprayed to fertilize agricultural fields. Any excess manure not soaked up by crops or grasses ends up in aquifers and waterways, contaminating wells with nitrate and causing health issues ranging from acute poisoning to cancer. In some states, like Iowa, animals in CAFOs produce 25 times as much waste as its human population.

The 13 groups were represented by Food & Water Watch staff attorney Emily Miller, who in September argued in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. EPA itself has admitted that fewer than 30 percent of CAFOs have Clean Water Act permits. In the petition denial EPA sent Food & Water Watch six years after the initial petition was filed in 2017, they wrote, "EPA shares your concern that CAFOs can be a significant source of pollutants into waters of the United States. The Agency recognizes that there may be opportunities to do more to address these pollutants." EPA's solution was to form a committee to determine next steps - a decision which the petitioners felt was too little, too late.

"EPA needs to really step up in their actions so that they can actually protect people and not just be saying, 'Oh, we're going to have more stakeholder meetings,'" Utesch says. "During all these years, all that's happened is further expansion."

In their denial, the judges wrote that though the agency acknowledged "the serious problem of CAFO-based waste discharges into U.S. waterways," its promise to "further study" its own manure pollution guidelines and "commission a stakeholders' subcommittee" was not an unreasonable response.

"The EPA has never demonstrated an urgency to the outright widespread devastation and impoverishment CAFOs leave in their wake," Utesch wrote in a text. "The well of 'hope' people echo we must keep is contaminated, and will continue to grow in its contamination, as long as EPA is beholden to corporate interests above the people their agency was designed to protect."

The "Special Sector That Gets a Pass"

The Clean Water Act was officially born in 1972, or in an era when cattle and pig CAFOs were coming to be the norm. Within the Clean Water Act, CAFOs are classified as "point sources" of pollution, requiring them to have National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits. But according to petitioners in Food & Water Watch et al. v. EPA, "Half a century later, the United States Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of CAFOs has become one of the Clean Water Act's greatest unmet promises."

Food & Water Watch first submitted a petition on behalf of 32 environmental organizations in 2017, "urging the agency to fix its failed factory farm program under the Clean Water Act," Miller tells Sentient.

The case outlines two main issues with the current EPA regulatory structure for CAFOs - one being that most factory farms discharge pollution but lack the required federal permits to control these discharges, and the second being that the permits themselves are insufficient to protect waterways and communities from pollution.

"The reason why these things are happening is because of agricultural exceptionalism," says Silvia Secchi, a professor of geographical and sustainability sciences at the University of Iowa. "EPA is treating agriculture as this kind of special sector that gets a pass, and then gets a second pass and a third pass."

The biggest "pass" in question in this lawsuit is the agricultural stormwater discharge exemption. Under the current EPA rule, Miller says, as long as factory farms are applying waste in accordance with a nutrient management plan, any discharges that are precipitation-related from its land application areas are exempt from regulation.

"What has happened is that this has essentially allowed thousands of operations to completely evade permitting requirements altogether for their nonexempt discharges, because it provides them an easy out to explain away any evidence of discharges coming from their facilities," she says. "It requires almost no oversight from EPA or any other state agency to confirm that the operation is actually meeting the exemption."

This limited oversight is causing destruction to communities who live closest to the polluters. There are downstream effects, too, as pollution from agricultural states is the largest contributor to the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.

The issue of CAFO pollution is a problem of scale, Chris Jones, water quality expert and president of Driftless Water Defenders recently said at an event on animal agriculture held in Des Moines. The solution does not exist in technological fixes or manure-treatment initiatives.

Instead, Jones says, "We need laws. We need laws that are going to help us get our arms around this and give us the environmental condition in this state that we deserve as citizens."

Secchi agrees.

"We need to see litigation as the way civil society responds to a captured agency," she tells Sentient. "Ideally we would have a more responsive Congress that does things to address new challenges...But because Congress cannot tie their shoelaces, what we have are these laws that have some good bones."

Ninth Circuit Sides With EPA Despite Persistent Pollution

In 2023, the EPA acknowledged that there was a significant problem with CAFO permitting and that their current regulations are failing to address it. But instead of addressing it head-on, Miller says, they decided to study it further.

"EPA is on record in a 2022 report stating that not only have its regulations failed to address the problem, but they are actually impeding effective enforcement of the Clean Water Act," she says. "In other words, the problem is persisting, not just in spite of EPA regulations, but because of them. What else does the EPA need to know?"

In court in September, Judge Salvador Mendoza asked EPA counsel in the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, "Why isn't now the time?" He added, "You don't need additional studies to understand the fact that you need to enforce the permitting process."

On Oct. 2, 2024, the judges released their final decision: "Because we find that EPA did not act arbitrarily, capriciously, or contrary to law, we deny the petition."

The decision comes as CAFO waste reaches untenable levels nationwide. According to Food & Water Watch, approximately 1.7 billion animals live in confinement on factory farms, producing 941 billion pounds of manure each year. And when it comes to pollution, Des Moines Water Works, which has the world's largest nitrate removal facility, must run their sometimes $10,000 per-day facility to keep drinking water safe for its residents when nitrate levels are high.

"We need judges who understand the reality of current agricultural production systems, the immediacy of the problems we face and the extensive evidence we already have," Secchi wrote in a text upon hearing the decision. "This panel [of judges] gave EPA leeway to keep kicking the can down the road. That's not a tenable situation."

Upon hearing the decision, Miller wrote in an email to Sentient: "We are of course disappointed by the decision. It's shocking that the court gave such short shrift to a critical issue. We'll keep working to hold EPA accountable for its decades of failure."

For Utesch, the entire process of petitioning and suing the EPA has instilled in her a belief that the agency is not serious about enforcing CAFO pollution, especially as it relates to human health.

"The CAFO issue is directly tied to human rights: the right one has to protecting personal health, home, air and water quality and quality of life, all which are severely compromised by industrial agribusiness," Utesch wrote. "EPA must remember and fulfill its mission, which is to protect."


Nina Elkadi wrote this article for Sentient.


get more stories like this via email

By Kari Lydersen for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Energy News Network-Public News Service Collaboration

When farmer Trent Gerlach found out a solar farm would be built on the land he had long worked in northwestern Illinois, he was disappointed.

"As a farmer, seeing that land taken out of production is difficult, when you farmed it for many years, you've been stewards to that land, fertilized that land, taken care of it as if it was your own," he said.

Gerlach's family had been raising corn, soybeans and livestock since 1968, and like many farmers, they leased farmland in addition to working their own land. And when the owner of one of those leased parcels decided to work with Acciona Energia to help site its High Point wind and solar farm, Gerlach initially was not enthusiastic.

"The thought of taking productive farm ground out of production with solar panels was not, in my personal opinion, ideal," he said.

But Gerlach was determined to make the best of the situation.

Ultimately, that meant a win-win arrangement, where Acciona pays him to manage vegetation around the 100 MW array of solar panels that went online in early 2024. Gerlach does that with a herd of 500 sheep.

"We don't own the land, we don't get a say - that's landowners' rights, and I'm very pro that," Gerlach recounted. "In U.S. agriculture, the biggest thing that gets farmers in trouble is saying, 'that's how we've always done it so that's what we're going to do.' Renewable energy is probably not going anywhere, whether you're for or against it, it's coming, it's what's happening. As an agriculture producer, we're going to adapt with it."

A promising arrangement

Researchers around the country are exploring agrivoltaics, or co-locating solar generation with agriculture in a mutually beneficial way. Projects range from growing tomatoes in California to wild blueberries in Maine, with varying levels of success.

Acciona regional manager Kyle Charpie said that sheep grazing appears an especially promising form of agrivoltaics, and one that the company is likely to continue exploring globally. Solar operators need to keep vegetation controlled, and sheep are a more effective and ecological way to do it than mechanized mowing. Acciona has long had a sheep agrivoltaic operation in Portugal, Charpie noted, and two projects in Texas are underway.

"It's incredibly cost-effective - sheep don't break down like a tractor; if a tractor blows a belt, you've lost a whole day of cutting," he said. "These grasses grow wickedly fast, it's that constant presence of the sheep that's been super super effective. It aligns with our sustainability goals."

"It's tough to say we're the greatest renewable company in the world [if] we have a bunch of tractors running up and down our fields belching out CO2," he continued.

Another advantage, Charpie said, is that at the end of the solar array's lifespan, the land beneath it will be restored and refreshed.

"We have all these sheep now who will spend 30-plus years breathing, living, using their hooves to churn up ground, even dying; it's the circle of life," he said. "When these farms get turned back to the families, that soil condition will be wonderful."

'He saw an opportunity here'

Gerlach's family had about 50 ewes when the idea for grazing around the solar panels struck. He "hounded" Acciona, in Charpie's words, to bring an agrivoltaic deal to fruition.

"He saw an opportunity here, and he has been his own best advocate, banging down the door, checking how close are we, when will we get our sheep here," Charpie said.

Gerlach ultimately bought about 500 sheep of two types: Dorper and Katahdin, small breeds that can fit easily under solar panels.

"The panels create lots of shade - during the heat of the day, they'll all be underneath the panels for shade," Gerlach said. "In early mornings, late evenings they're out grazing aggressively. They don't bother the panels one bit."

Gerlach said his family "used to raise livestock like everybody did back in the day," and his farm has won awards for its cattle, but raising livestock has become less profitable in recent years. Agrivoltaics offer an opportunity to delve back into raising sheep, something Gerlach loves. A commercial sheep operation would only be possible with the payments for vegetation management, he said.

"Raising sheep in the United States is challenging because the market for sheep is not very high," he said. There's not much of a domestic wool market, and "the meat side of sheep and lamb never really caught on in the U.S. - we're a beef, pork, poultry-consuming country."

Gerlach sells the bulk of his lambs around the Easter season, and largely for kosher and halal consumption. Since that market is so limited, the ewes largely earn their keep being paid to graze.

"We love providing stewardship to the animals. That's what U.S. agriculture was built on hundreds of years ago," Gerlach said. "It marries really well with our crop production" on nearby land. "In agriculture you need diversification. By bringing sheep and livestock production in, we can afford to hire more full-time employees."

Sheep are the livestock best suited to agrivoltaics, stakeholders agree.

"You can't use cattle because they're too large, they would rub on the panels and break them," Gerlach said. "You can't use goats because goats would climb on the panels, and they're natural chewers, they would chew on the wires."

The High Point solar array is divided up into separate plots with fences, "like perfect little pens for the sheep," added Charpie.

In a bigger uninterrupted plot, a farmer would likely need to move water sources for sheep strategically around the area to make sure the animals cover the entire plot. Gerlach's flock only grazes about a fifth of the Acciona solar array. He's hoping to expand, though feeding and sheltering sheep during the winter when they can't graze is costly.

"I've got three young kids. Hopefully we raise them in agriculture. It's such a good practice for our young people to learn responsibility and stewardship," Gerlach said.

"[The animals] come first, they get fed and watered and taken care of before us. Sometimes agriculture gets portrayed in a poor light, especially larger production agriculture. I try to really push that that's not everybody. Talk to a local farmer, a local person - you generally see that we're stewards of the land, we want healthy ground and livestock. That can marry in fine with clean energy."


Kari Lydersen wrote this article for Energy News Network.


get more stories like this via email